Category Archives: Brene’ Brown

Something Good

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1. Giving away good stuff for free. There are a lot of websites and blogs where if you sign up for the regular newsletter, you get a free book–and these aren’t cheap, crappy giveaways, this is meaningful, useful, and oftentimes beautifully designed content. Some good stuff for I’ve gotten for free recently:

  • “The Anatomy of Joy,” a 90 minute talk, live streamed online, by Brene’ Brown.
  • The Open Heart Project. You’ve heard me talk about it before and plenty, but I can’t say enough good things about it. If you are interested in meditation, you absolutely should sign up for this. Susan’s mini (not small in meaning, but short in time) dharma talks and meditation with instruction are definitely something good. This week, she talked about one of my favorite subjects, basic goodness, in her “You are Good” post.
  • Hulu. I know that in a technical way, it’s not really free (they make you watch commercials), but I love that while I no longer pay for cable tv, I can still selectively and mindfully watch the good stuff (which mostly means “stuff that makes me laugh”): Modern Family, Parks & Recreation, 30 Rock, Community, and Glee.
  • Creative Joy Workbook (click the link to download your own copy), put together by Susannah Conway, Jennifer Louden, and Marianne Elliott. Susannah also shared links to all the other people who wrote about creative joy last week, and made a creative joy mix tape (she makes the best mixes!).

2. Speaking of Susannah’s mix tapes, I was listening to her “Dance Meditation” mix this weekend, and heard Samantha James, who I hadn’t known about before, and who I am now loving. Here’s a video of the title song from her new album.

 

3. Real Writers Rest from The Write Practice blog. This is a great collection of wisdom, but you want to know the irony? I’ve been too busy to read all of it!

4. Demystifying self-care: 34 ways to begin your self-care practice, a great list by Jenn Gibson on Roots of She. Again, the proof that I need to read this is that I haven’t given myself the time or space to take a mindful look at it, or get even close to applying any of its wisdom.

5. 11 Questions, 11 Answers from A Design So Vast. This meme sounds so fun, but I don’t have time to do it right now…are you sensing a theme here, dear reader?

6. Castaway on the Moon. I wanted to watch a movie one night last week, and was trying to find something on Netflix streaming. I was considering Melancholia, but it was described as dark and dramatic, and I was home alone. Just as I was about to stoop as low as I could get and watch “No Strings Attached” with Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher, I saw the listing for Castaway on the Moon, and remembered that my friend Courtney had watched and recommended it. So good…

 

7. You might not know this about me, but I think things like Autocorrect Fail are so funny, I can’t even read them–I start laughing so hard, I can hardly stop, and almost make myself sick, (seriously, even having to look it up to get the link was risky). Here’s another set I loved, Texts From My Dog.

8. Smart and funny, it’s Incidental Comics.

Day of Rest

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image by peter harrison

We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty. ~Maya Angelou

Yesterday afternoon, I sat on a golden couch, laughing, crying, and cuddling with my dear friend and her two pups. The window was open to the sun, our feet were bare, and there was the scent of purple lilacs in the room. We’d gathered together to watch Brene’ Brown give a talk at the Omega NYC Conference, graciously streamed live and for free, “The Anatomy of Joy.”

Brene’ talked about what gets in the way of joy. One thing she mentioned is that we live in a culture of “deep, deep scarcity, and never enough.” It isn’t enough to wake up, love who we love, do our jobs, try our best–we must be extraordinary. From this perspective, our first thought of the day is “I didn’t get enough sleep” and our last is “I didn’t get enough done,” and an ordinary life = a meaningless life.

We think we aren’t enough, that our lives have to be big, loud and shiny to be worthwhile, and this is tragic. It’s disheartening and exhausting to think about how we do this to ourselves, how we’ve internalized these ideas about ourselves and our life, about the value inherent in them, or lack thereof.

If you haven’t already read it, I highly recommend reading Brene’s book The Gifts of Imperfection. It quite literally changed my life, helped to save my life. In it, she expands in detail on many of the concepts she talked about yesterday. The short list, the ways in which we can cultivate joy in our lives, is:

  • Embrace vulnerability
  • Practice gratitude
  • Let go of numbing
  • Set boundaries
  • Own our stories

In terms of practicing gratitude, Brene’ said that it is the way in which we can soften to joy. We can notice, accept grace and love, and give thanks, and in this way, we can fully experience joy, embody it.

When I first encountered Brene’ Brown’s work, I was in a very dark moment of my life. I was grieving, stuck, confused, angry, depressed, anxious, and immersed in habitual and destructive ways of thinking and being–unhappy and suffering.

But now, nine months later, the life I live is in stark contrast to that darkness. Today, as a way of celebrating the changes I’ve made, the risks I took, this transformation, I’d like to share a list of 25 things I did to transform my life.

25 things I did to transform my life

  1. Married Eric
  2. Moved to Colorado
  3. Rescued and raised three dogs
  4. Finished undergraduate and graduate degrees, but chose not to pursue a Ph.D.
  5. Write morning pages
  6. Finally completed The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity, after three attempts and ten years, with the help of a group of amazing women artists
  7. Adopted writing, meditation, yoga, and dog as spiritual, daily practices.
  8. Renegotiated my job, freeing myself from a toxic situation and changing my schedule from 12 months to nine
  9. Shambhala Warrior training
  10. Therapy, three times when I really, really needed it
  11. Work with a trainer
  12. Got rid of cable TV
  13. Stopped drinking alcohol and reduced my dependance on caffeine
  14. Drink more whole, organic juice, and eat cleaner, healthier food
  15. Realized I was a highly functioning food addict and started the hard work of rehabilitating my relationship with food
  16. Get up at 4:30 am every morning
  17. Made a stand up workstation for my computer at home
  18. Formed WILD writing group
  19. Blogging
  20. Teaching
  21. Year of retreat, “Fearless Creativity” retreat with Susan Piver, Well-Fed Woman Retreatshop with Rachel Cole
  22. Bought a ticket to the World Domination Summit
  23. E Courses: Mondo Beyondo, Superhero Photo, Ordinary Courage, Blogging from the Heart, Unravelling, and Telling True Stories
  24. Took vows
  25. Chose to stop smashing myself to bits, to love and care for myself instead

image by yoko nekonomania, blue hygrangea: kelly's favorite flower

What have you done for yourself that you’d like to celebrate? On this day of rest, my hope is that you might take a few minutes and make your own list, even if you don’t write it down or share it, and thank yourself for all the love, all the hard work, and revel in the joy of your life, no matter how ordinary or small it might be.

You are enough. Please, kind and gentle reader, remember how precious you are, how amazing it all is–notice and feel that today, right here, right now.

Cheer up. It’s okay. You’re perfect.